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Digital certificates are central to establishing trust in today’s complex virtual landscape. These certificates can be difficult to manage due to the complexities of the certificate lifecycle and its many stages. Businesses may need to juggle hundreds or even thousands of digital certificates while also keeping up with compliance concerns and complex integrations. With certificate validity periods becoming even shorter in the near future, manual certificate management processes, and the considerable deficits associated with this approach, are simply no longer sufficient.

Automated certificate lifecycle management (CLM) solutions bring a more structured and streamlined approach to essential certificate processes, automating everything from digital certificate issuance to renewals and even deployment.

We will discuss common certificate management challenges and how choosing the right automated CLM platform can help overcome these challenges.

Common challenges in certificate lifecycle management

Certificate lifecycle management is an all-encompassing term that references the many steps and strategies used while overseeing the full lifecycle associated with digital certificates including SSL certificates, S/MIME certificates, and more. This touches on every stage, beginning when certificates are created but also influencing how they are renewed, revoked, or (when effective management is lacking) allowed to expire.

These common CLM challenges can affect businesses of all sizes—from small companies to major enterprises:

Manual processes

Manual certificate management, simply put, presents the biggest challenge a company will face in regards to certificate lifecycle management. This time-consuming approach uses hands-on intervention and requires IT professionals to have a deep understanding of every digital certificate that’s currently in use within their environment. Tasks like generating Certificate Signing Requests (CSRs), seeking verification with trusted Certificate Authorities (CAs), and deploying certificates into their end systems in a timely manner must all be completed manually.

Typically, businesses utilize spreadsheets or other fragmented manual tracking systems to keep up with these tasks. This process is time-intensive for a single certificate, but imagine the commitment required when dealing with hundreds or thousands of digital certificates. With so much to handle, it’s only a matter of time before IT departments fall behind or make mistakes that can lead to outages and costly consequences.

Increased complexities

While some small business owners may believe that they can handle seemingly modest certificate needs internally, the limitations of this approach quickly become evident as their operations expand and certificate requirements start to scale up. For large enterprises, the challenge is even more pronounced due to the sheer scope of certificate management, which could involve thousands of both public and private certificates.

Overburdened IT departments may struggle to track certificate expirations, updates, and compliance mandates, leading to potential security risks and operational disruptions. Ensuring that all certificates across the company are accounted for and knowing when they expire is a complex task. Without centralized visibility, certificates can expire unnoticed, causing system outages or security breaches. If multiple teams or systems are involved, this increases the complexity exponentially.

Frequent certificate expirations

Certificate expirations are important, as these can enhance compliance efforts while also limiting the window of time in which threat actors can exploit vulnerabilities. Unfortunately, this necessity brings about a major source of inconvenience: the need to periodically renew digital certificates. With manual processes, IT staffers cannot rest after they have issued certificates; they need to continue monitoring and must be prepared to go through a potentially lengthy renewal process.

While this already feels cumbersome, such concerns are only expected to escalate as we move towards 90-day certificate validity periods. Google has made it abundantly clear that this will soon be the new normal, and, while shorter lifespans promise to boost security, this is only possible if digital certificates are actually renewed on time. Otherwise, enterprises face a world of trouble as they begin to tackle more frequent certificate renewals — and as a result, they will be even more prone to expired SSL certificates.

Lack of centralized oversight

In enterprise environments with multiple systems, fragmented certificate management makes it challenging to track expiration dates and renewals effectively. Organizations may not even be aware of all the certificates currently in use across their networks.

Many enterprises adopt a decentralized approach, in which individual teams or departments are responsible for handling their own certificate concerns. This approach results in limited overall visibility and can lead to inefficiencies, complicated tracking, and a heightened risk of errors.

Without effective certificate discovery to identify all certificates within an environment and centralized visibility into them, expired certificates may go unnoticed until they disrupt services. This lack of oversight can dramatically increase the risk of outages. CLM systems promise enhanced visibility by offering automated certificate discovery and single pane of glass management.

High operational costs

The manual strategies referenced above are not only time-consuming, but also, incredibly expensive. Manual certificate management is labor-intensive, and this can lead to considerable labor expenses — all while other IT needs remain unaddressed. Operational costs may also increase as a result of human error, which is far more likely when relying on manual systems. Resolving these errors could spark high administrative costs and additional labor expenses.

Quantified benefits of automated certificate lifecycle management

The challenges highlighted above are concerning, but thankfully, they are by no means inevitable. By automating certificate lifecycle management and using a platform like Sectigo Certificate Manager (SCM), enterprises can bypass these issues and see dramatic improvements in everything from IT efficiency to cybersecurity and compliance. Many of these advantages are easily quantifiable, as revealed below:

End-to-end automation

From request to deployment, automating the entire certificate lifecycle greatly reduces the time and resources required for certificate management. This is especially true for the deployment stage of digital certificates, where they must be deployed to end systems and applications.

A CLM platform with extensive integration options, like SCM, enables seamless certificate deployment to end systems which eliminates the need for manual intervention. Automating this part of the certificate lifecycle is highly valuable because manual deployment is time-consuming and prone to errors. Automation frees up IT personnel to focus on more strategic initiatives.

Reduction in costs for legacy systems

Legacy systems are not only difficult and expensive to maintain but also lead to added costs in licensing, IT maintenance, solution hosting, and training. Implementing a modern CLM solution can be cost-effective because it often enables organizations to discontinue the use of legacy on-premises systems. The savings from getting rid of outdated, legacy solutions and consolidating services into one central environment can quickly exceed the cost of implementing a new CLM system.

SCM specifically is a cloud-native solution which provides added cost savings when compared to on-premise legacy systems.

Reduced outages and downtime

Certificate outages can spark devastating losses, leading not only to immediate financial concerns due to downtime, but also, long-term problems in response to outage-related reputational damage. When certificate renewals are automated, the chances of suffering outages can be greatly reduced. With outages no longer part of the picture, enterprises can save on mitigation efforts and enjoy improved profits far into the future.

Increased ROI

Bringing a quantified approach to understanding the many benefits of implementing an automated CLM solution, a recent Total Economic Impact (TEI) report from the trusted resource Forrester Research revealed an impressive ROI for the Sectigo Certificate Manager platform: a shocking 243 percent — and a total three-year, risk-adjusted present value (PV) of $1.3 million. This study also highlighted reductions of $1.3 million (over three years) in provisioning-related labor expenses upon implementing Sectigo’s certificate management solution.

Unquantified benefits of automated CLM

Many CLM advantages, although difficult to quantify, are worth considering because they help enterprises avoid or mitigate common risks. Benefits worth considering include:

Enhanced security and risk reduction

IT professionals have a lot to offer, but even the most talented and attentive can be prone to errors — especially when they are overburdened by escalating certificate management requirements. In this way, CLM automation acts as a valuable form of risk reduction, addressing one of the most common sources of certificate expiration: human error. Automated certificate management improves consistency and reduces the likelihood of misconfigurations and other issues sparked by manual processes.

Scalability

Digital certificate needs can change over time, and, with 90-day expiration dates on the horizon, it’s clear that many enterprises are about to see their digital certificate demands escalate considerably in the near future. Therein lies the value of scalable CLM solutions, which grow right alongside the enterprises they support. Manual processes are far less scalable, as there are only so many hours IT staff members can work — and so many employees enterprises can add to their already sizable IT departments.

Ownership at the source

Relying on policy-based rules, automated CLM enhances SSL/TLS certificate management by minimizing the need for human intervention. When certificate processes are strictly manual, their technical complexity can lead to delays and errors due to reliance on staff members. However, automated CLM solutions streamline key processes by executing them without requiring direct human input. This can greatly reduce the burden on busy IT departments.

Improved reporting and alerts

Visibility is a must for modern digital certificate management, but the sheer scope of these certificates can make it difficult to keep track of their validity periods and other essentials. Automated CLM places these details front and center, making it easier to understand certificate status and even sending notifications when certificates are about to expire.

While the benefits of real-time visibility can be difficult to quantify, it’s clear that this reduces the likelihood of many potentially costly issues, such as outages or compliance concerns.

Overcome CLM challenges with Sectigo Certificate Manager

As the industry leader in CLM automation, Sectigo offers a trusted certificate lifecycle management solution designed to overcome the common challenges highlighted above. Sectigo Certificate Manager is a universal, purpose-driven platform that promises a reliable and streamlined approach to discovering, issuing, deploying, and managing digital certificates. Schedule a SCM demo or explore our free trial to see our certificate management system in action.

If you would like to learn more about the many financial and operational benefits associated with our SCM, feel free to download the insightful TEI from Forrester Research.